Talk:Marduk
2/11/11 New Category I think this Class 7 Deity line in the Powers section was added before Devilmanozzy created the new Media Classification tag. There is no indication what Class Marduk is, in the episode. In the Media/RGB scale, he could be between 7-10 for all we know. I think we should remove the category and line of info. Mrmichaelt 01:23, February 12, 2011 (UTC) :I think that this is based off of the greek god concept actually. But Mrmichaelt, its your call, I put you in charge of this department. Devilmanozzy (Talk Page) 07:30, February 12, 2011 (UTC) ::Yeah, definitely a Deity. While we can list Class 7 in the appropriate column in the Paranormal Database, in this article, I think its for the best we omit the Class 7 thing. Mrmichaelt 10:51, February 12, 2011 (UTC) VA Trivia Removed 1/13/17 Trivia of Marduk being voiced by the late Stanley Ralph Ross was removed until a source can be provided. Mrmichaelt (talk) 11:06, January 13, 2017 (UTC) Moving Trivia "*The snapshot of Marduk was an actual photograph in real life which was rotoscoped into this animated cartoon episode." :Moving trivia to talk page. So like a production cell was rotoscoped into this scene instead an animated like the rest of the episode? ::No it wasn't a production art cell ...It was an actual 35mm photograph. The mysterious snapshot was shown to me in Bernal Heights District of San Francisco in 1978 by a young man and his brother who carried it in his wallet. When I told Richard Mueller I had seen it in real life, he told me Dan Aykroyd had personally given him the story topic for "I Am The City." :::May I have the full story? You are talking about two personal anecdotes and this trivia item and they're mixing together. ONE: From what I gather, in 1978, you were in Bernal Heights District, San Francisco, and a man and his brother showed you a photograph of a NYC subway entrance. Is there some real life famous supernatural phenomena with the subway entrance? TWO: Then x years later, at what I guess was a convention, you met and spoke to Mueller. You told him about the subway photo you once saw. He replied Aykroyd gave him the "idea" for "I Am The City." What "idea"? Using Marduk and Tiamat? Coming out of a subway? THREE: And so this shot of the Ghostbusters looking at the photo is a photo of the same NYC subway entrance you saw but rotoscoped into the scene? Couldn't it just have been an animator just drawing it like a frame? Mrmichaelt (talk) 03:58, November 13, 2017 (UTC) :::::Okay, Mrmichaelt, Here's the full story: in 1978 I was 7 years old attending the 2nd grade living in Lowell Massachusetts. Shortly after witnessing a redish-orange cigar shaped UFO flying slowly and silently just above tree top level headed due north over interstate 495 towards downtown in a perfectly planar trajectory, my mother and I moved back to San Francisco, my original hometown. While attending the 3rd grade there, I met and befriended 2 young brothers from the African American community at our neighborhood school bus stop in The Bernal Heights district. The brothers and I attended seperate schools but rode the same bus together each day. One day, after school, I invited them both over to my grandfather's house to hang out. The one Brother was taller and older, the other brother was slightly younger and had crossed eyes. We were all around the same general age of aprox 7-9. We were sitting around and I had a small wind up Godzilla toy that shot sparks out of it's mouth when you wound it up that I was showing them, thinking it was neat, saying check out my God-zilla. The older brother then asked me if I believed in God. I said, yes, I do. He then asked me if I believed in the devil. I anwsered Yes, I suppose so. I do, yes. At that point he said, let's show him, he motioned to his brother with the crossed eyes who then pulled a 35mm kodak style snapshot photograph out of his wallet. He said, "This is a picture of the devil." It was a lean but muscular man flying like Superman out of a building with reddish-orange (like the UFO I saw in Lowell) skin and emenating an aura or halo around him. he was wearing a closefitting golden kilt with royal blue trim and a grey fez with a single horn visible and a diadem in front, he had a long beard and most startling of all he had two eyes and two ears visible in profile. I will never forget that photo as long as I live. There was never any explaination as to where or how they got it...no backstory. I was taken aback. Sometime after they left the house, I told my father what happened. He told me, "One man's devil could very well be another man's god." I have a photographic memory to a large extent and the photo did not seem right somehow. I can't explain it , but it's what we might call a very good photoshop today. It seemed like a photo model or actor in full body paint make-up wearing a costume and was tilted and superimposed over a photo of another scene to make it look like he was flying, then a glow was added...either that or it was a legitimate supernatural event which occured at least in the late 70s and was somehow captured on film. I never saw it again until The Real Ghostbusters episode aired in syndication in 1987. When I saw it on tv for the first time back in Lowell Massachusetts. It all came back to me. I phoned the USA network when the show ran on that station and asked when it would air again, as I wanted to tape it next chance I could. Sometime later I did, Since then I'd done much Biblical Arcaeological research into religions of the ancient Near East concerning Marduk and Tiamat including Assyrian cylinder seals and one mind-blowing Mesopotamian shell plaque from 2400 B.C. from the Illustrated Guide To The Bible by J.R. Porter which shows Marduk wearing a proton pack and shooting Tiamat with a stream of nutrona depicted killing one of it's heads with three wavy lines (the internation symbol for radiation) and startling proof of either time travel or pre-cognition (I favor the former) , I've even done epigraphy work for the late Mr. Zecharia Sitchin who wrote a book in 1976 about a planet called Marduk named after the Babylonian deity entitled, "The 12th Planet", as well as instrumental trancommunication research contacting another dimension called Mardu also the "Simon Necronomicon" published by Avon press which is supposedly an ancient tome dealing with the forces of Marduk and Timat and it was during this video research that I discovered it was Richard Mueller (the author of the novelization of the 1984 Ghostbusters film) who had penned the episode. In an effort to get to the bottom of the mystery, I contacted the Writer's Guild via the internet and tracked down Mr. Muller's contact information. I found his phone number in New York and called him to conduct a telephone interview, he was very cordial. He addressed all my questions, the call took place during the first Gulf war and when I mentioned the reason I was calling was about "I Am The City" first thing he said was "Marduk" I said, Yes, Marduk." He went on to say what a shame it was about the war now taking place in Iraq. I told him I was an actor doing research on playing the late comedian Mr. Leo Gorcey (which I screen tested for in 2006) in a major Hollywood motion picture biopic about Leo Gorcey and The Bowery Boys/Dead End Kids which he had written about in the Ghostbusters novel where I saw for the first time about Spook Busters, Ghost Chasers, and Spook Chasers. Etc. We discussed all the many instances I noticed in the cartoon series that contained references to characters, jokes and situations from Leo Gorcey movies. Besides like inside baseball, behind the scenes jokes about corrupting the youth of America in the RGB series when I mentioned either the joint (or cigarette) in the ashtray at the begining of the episode and subliminal advertisements for Hostess Cupcakes in the earthquake scene in "I Am The City" which he said he got the title for from a song by ABBA, he told me that the RGB design for Marduk and Tiamat came from the Dungeons & Dragons sourcebook "Deities & Demigods" so I obtained a copy of that later on, although strangely, Marduk isn't pictured wering his horned "Loyal Order of the Waterbuffaloes" fez in their book illustrations. About this point in the conversation I mentioned that I had been shown the photo they incorporated in the episode. it was at this point that he told me he was instructed to write the episode by none other than Mr. Dan Aykroyd himself and it wasn't solely the brainchild of his own imagination. Was the photo I saw in 1978 that later turned up on RGB episode part of an elaborate hoax floated into the African American community in San Francisco by some secret society? unless and until I can speak candidly with Dan Aykroyd myself the case remains open and unsolved and I rule no possibilities out, including that this entire episode was based on actual... and very paranormal events.Frapsap (talk) 01:35, November 14, 2017 (UTC) ::::::Thank you for that, Frapsap. Mrmichaelt (talk) 02:33, November 14, 2017 (UTC) "*The scene of Marduk waking up on a park bench is taken directly from the opening of the 1937 film "Dead End"" *Do we have a summary or stills showing the ending to this movie? Mrmichaelt (talk) 00:43, November 10, 2017 (UTC) ::It is at time stamp 2:15-2:25 on video "Watch Dead End 1937 full movies online" on youtube. Either way, is this really that uncommon? Devilmanozzy (Talk Page) 14:37, November 12, 2017 (UTC) :::Is what uncommon? The way the police officer taps twice on the park bench and says to the poor homeless man in rumpled suit and fedora "Move Along." The exact number of taps and exact same word for word dialogue and senario as in " I Am The City." Yes, Devilmanozzy it's really that uncommon. All the writers of the film's and cartoons (Not just Richard Mueller) gleaned material and jokes from The Dead End Kids, East Side Kids and Bowery Boys second features (The originators of the name "Ghost Busters"). that clip should fill the bill for the evidence the wiki needs to have this item placed back under the trivia section.Frapsap (talk) 17:14, November 12, 2017 (UTC) ::::I'm not entirely convinced. In the movie, the vagrant doesn't mumble to the officer like in the RGB episode - in the movie he just gets up and walks away. And its a dock vs. a park. Police do that all the time, tapping the bench and telling loiterers to move along. It seems incidental even with the connection to the classic movies. Mrmichaelt (talk) 03:58, November 13, 2017 (UTC) :::::I'm not trying to be argumentative here, but my case "for" seems tons stronger than the case against. I've checked this wiki's rules, and my proof of citation conforms with the policy, even the speculation policy dosn't apply. It's fairly solid proof. Just because they added Marduk mumbling in the cartoon, doesn't prevent it from being an homage to this 1937 sequence, of course they changed and updated it for an 80's audience. They made the officer a helmeted hourse mounted policeman rather than a beat cop, but the premise is identical. The line spoken by the officer is the same in both versions. And the two taps of the nightstick on the park bench match up as well. If you're telling me that it's a mere co-incidence...or from plenty of other movies I disagree. When I brought the information up, that I had identified this sequence as being from Dead End, to Richard Mueller, Mr. Mueller said, "We threw in a lot of litttle things like that" That wasn't the high five I was looking for, it was a vague anwser about catching the Dead End reference but he seemd genuinely astonished by my level of research. I believe I've demonstrated the correlation here, according to all the wiki rules and I ask it to be restored to Trivia section entries of which I myself wrote as well as The entire History section, The Powers section i.e, the 12 civilian forms (except for the IDW references) which has even appeared in print The Real Ghostbusters Sony archive Volume 3 DVDs pamphlet).Frapsap (talk) 23:57, November 13, 2017 (UTC) ::::::Understood. We're just trying to do our due diligence. You make some good points about the movie reference. I'm discussing one last thing with Devilmanozzy then I'll make a final decision. I am leaning towards restoring the movie trivia just so you know in the meantime. It should take us a few more days. I appreciate your patience in this matter. Mrmichaelt (talk) 02:33, November 14, 2017 (UTC)